DRK adjustments idea

[OdinelStarrei]

One of my main issues with DRK is Stalwart Soul. All other tanks get their 2nd AoE skill around level 40, yet DRK has to wait until level 72? Ridiculous! It's so stupid! Introduce the skill at an early level like all other tanks and then give it a trait at a later level that allows the blood gauge to fill.

The other thing that bothers me is, of course, Delirium. Like what shao32 said, it has to either be reworked or removed. Though we may have to wait until the next expansion comes out in order for that to happen, sadly.

TECHNICALLY, I think the justification from a design perspective is that you already learn Flood Of Darkness, 250 potency, 3 effective usages per pull, as your 2nd AoE skill at 30. You do generate MP really quickly out of combat between pulls, so maybe that's the reason??? I don't agree with this, because Stalwart Soul is only 10 potency higher than Unleash, and can have it's restoration aspects locked behind a trait like Enhanced Blackblood II in SB at 66 or something. You are right, Mythril Tempest and Prominence are both learned early and traited late, so I don't get why DRK can't be the same way to have a slightly less mind numbing experience in AoE early on. Considering we have DNC/RDM/MCH/GNB running around in sub-70 content absolutely destroying everything, I feel that adding 10 potency to DRK wouldn't be the end of the world. (Unleash > 150, SS > 160) I'm fairly sure balance in sub-80 content doesn't matter anyway, otherwise we'd probably have Dark Missionary in UCOB and UWU.

Can't tell you where I heard this from, I really don't remember, but someone during the Media Tour asked about this exact problem. The response being "Does it really matter?" I would say yes, the AoE experience of a job for 42 levels, and the majority of that leveling experience being dungeon pulls, is a fairly significant reason to have more than 1 GCD button in your AoE combo by the time you're entering Shadowbringers. When you have the same amount of offensive AoE options as a Heavensward WHM at 71 (1GCD, 1 oGCD), something may have gone amiss.

-insert Delirium complaint here-

You lot have made really good points. I main DRK and think its fine, I felt SB was a complete mess but I was just thinking of minor changes to improve the class outside of the whole "bring back DA spam!!" argument. I dont think the devs will be paying too much attention to us DRK mains and I agree with living dead being basically useless and in need of changes. So if you sat down at SE and were told to make adjustments to DRK what would you do? I think big pull aoe DRK is currently pretty good and more fun then other tanks but single target is where it gets boring. I dont think DA spam is the answer, perhaps lowering the blood cost of current abilities and adding a new one or making a blood gauge combo?

No one is saying bring back DA exactly as it was. This is a strawman about DRK players. Dark Arts, as it was, needed tweaking to reduce the casts per minute of oGCDs. This is what Edge/Flood do. All Edge is, is tweaked 3.X Dark Arts with less steps and less kit interactivity. It's more expensive, you can't use it as much. 1768 MP with 6939 MP, or in more meaninful terms, 3 usages with a little extra left over, much like Edge is now. There was just spam because they didn't increase of percentage cost of DA to compensate for the increased MP from longer BWs, not draining MP, and Delirium steroids, which is another design misstep of SB DRK. (DA as it was in SB would've costed 2K mana today, as a sidenote.) I personally think that people who do say "Dark Arts was better, bring it back." are instead referring to 2 points.

1. DRK's kit actually interacting with itself, being individually interesting components that comprise a more bigger, if unwieldy, whole.
2. DRK being the faster tank in general. This is due to Blood Weapon changes, not due to Dark Arts specifically.

Bring back DA does has a better ring to it, I will admit. Succinct, but it does miss the mark a tad.

Were Dark Arts to survive into 5.X with the same mentality they are taking to Edge/Flood, it probably would've also received a substantial increase in it's potency modification via trait like Edge and Flood do. In "theory", you could just supplant all the good 5.X things (Missionary and Edge of Shadow) onto the 4.X kit and I don't think too much changes. It's really when they started messing with Blood Weapon, Delirium, and Darkside where everything fell apart.

Optimized DRK in 4.X was doing the same thing that optimized DRK is doing in 5.X in terms stockpiling MP for raid buff windows and dumping for damage. (Blood served an entirely different purpose outside of "fell cleave time" Resource dump from multiple sources vs main source of GCD damage is an important distinction) The difference now is that 3.X/4.X had a failure state in both directions, where you could overcap and lose MP, or my favorite "i have MP must press glowy DA button right now this instant wtf where'd all my mana go i can't unleash im pressing too many buttons job too hard"

Now we don't have a failure state anymore. That's not due to Dark Arts going away, that is the combination of numerous, conscious decisions to change the damage profile into more GCDs, reduce the MP regeneration rate, changing TBN, amongst other things.

I have given up on Living Dead.

If you sat me down in front of anyone at the SE Job Design Team, I would ask them what's the point of Delirium first, what was the reasoning behind the MP changes, why they decided that when we said almost unilaterally (rare for DRKs) that "We want DRK to have utility in 8man content" that meant making it into a WAR clone, and to maybe go look at literally any forum, because it goes beyond JP forums, for feedback on DRK by players who actually understood how to play it, god knows we have enough topics about it by now, it's practically it's own meme.

If you made Dark Missionary one expansion earlier, or Slashing Debuff wasn't on WAR, or you didn't buff WAR and change Shake It Off to be scaling raid shields compared to a selfish self-cleanse, DRK probably would've had way higher player numbers like in launch Deltascape, because it was the same situation that SAM, WHM, MCH and BLM found themselves in by being pigeon-holed in an endgame environment that heavily favored and emphasized raid buffs, and party synergy, something those jobs did not offer, DRK in particular lacking the ease of use and flexibility of, for example, WHM. The alternatives in every role, not only tanks, just fit the landscape at the time, and only at the complete apex of player ability, not content. The answer to that wasn't to boil all tanks down into the same grey soup, we have a multi-job, single character game. Stop balancing jobs based on play rate, it's doesn't matter how many players play a job if the job itself is a boring, broken husk. blah blah level 60 job in level 80 content blah blah

Realistically, I'd just beg for tweaks. Darkside duration to be nerfed, BW to become Bunshin because obviously we're never going fast again, consider higher MP regen amounts vs MP ticks, and Delirium to give less free BS GCDs, more MP, on a lower cooldown (such as 45 seconds) to break up the flow between burst windows and to reduce the over-reliance on favorable killtimes or really, anything else. I don't even really dislike 5.X DRK, it's just hasn't reached it's potential or developed a real individualized "identity", it's being handicapped by the baggage of previous iterations and being a WAR clone.

(Hey, I don't like the fact that in E11S, during the 2nd Burnt Strike, if that one is Fire, the WAR next to me can IR no problem, but I have to do a stupid mid-pushback plunge to keep uptime and keep alignment, that has nothing to do with this topic I just wanted to complain)

This wasn't supposed to be long, but it kind of ended up that way. Sorry. Really loving the raid tier though!

[Kabooa]

(Hey, I don't like the fact that in E11S, during the 2nd Burnt Strike, if that one is Fire, the WAR next to me can IR no problem, but I have to do a stupid mid-pushback plunge to keep uptime and keep alignment, that has nothing to do with this topic I just wanted to complain)

The whole wall aside, which included some interesting vantages on SB->ShB Dark, I just want to say that I find reactive solutions to immediate problems more interesting than blanket immunity.

Not a gold star tank here, but I personally enjoy cheating forced movement in that manner. It feels better than arms/IR immunity, but that's preference.